


this silence is mine

by solid-no-on-that-on (DragonsAddicted)



Series: of goddesses and spirits and all lost things [5]
Category: Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda) - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Character Study, Happy Ending, Independent fic, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), i am back on my bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-13
Updated: 2019-06-13
Packaged: 2020-05-07 08:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19206082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonsAddicted/pseuds/solid-no-on-that-on
Summary: All around his Hyrule, Wild can hear the Luminous Stones calling out to him.It isn't until he's traveling with the others when he finally figures out why.





	this silence is mine

     They say that Luminous Stones are the souls of the dead.

 

     Wild can hear them whispering sometimes. He can’t make out the words that they say or what they want but he knows that they call to him, almost wanting something.

 

     He wonders what they could possibly need. If the legends about them are true, they are dead, after all.

 

     He couldn’t remember hearing them before, back in that other life as a Champion, a sacred knight with smooth skin and the weight of the world in his eyes.

 

     Admittedly his memory is a little hazy but he’s pretty sure Zelda would have mentioned something, or that it wouldn’t feel so strange and alien to hear these things.

 

     He asked the old man about it and before Rhoam awkwardly laughed it off he caught a look of confusion, despair, and pity.

 

     Years later, he will realize that Rhoam thought that the century asleep had broken his mind, fractured it into pieces like the shards of flint he used to find in the rocky outcrops sprinkled across the land.

 

     And maybe it did. Wild doesn’t know. He died, after all.

 

* * *

 

 

     He finds one against his house.

 

     It’s a small outcrop, not big enough to yield more than a single piece of stone, but it feels so different from the stark energy of those sprinkled around Hyrule. It’s warm, welcoming, familiar.

 

     He’s tried to find out what the stones are, why they whisper to him in a way that is achingly familiar and makes his very soul ache to sing along with their moaning song.

 

     He sometimes catches himself humming along.

 

     And it isn’t until he meets the others, the other hims from other times that he finally understands.

 

     He starts to recognize some of the others’ Hyrules, places and people tending to stay the same throughout the times. While everything seems so drastically different from each other, there are always some things that stay relatively constant.

 

     Zelda

 

     Ganon

 

      _Link_

 

     He knows that there has to be more than just their nine. While Ganon always seems to take his time being reborn, Hylian lives are so short compared to any of the other races.

 

     One day they walk into a new Hyrule, one none have them have seen before, with a village set up on a tranquil plain with mountains on either side in the distance.

 

     Assuming there’s a new hero, they inquire about the whereabouts of a man named Link.

 

     They are directed to a rocky outcrop with an aging house on its bluff. It’s familiar to Wild, something that’s part of his Hyrule, and remembers the view. While the trees that surround the yet-to-be-established Serenne stable have not grown yet, the mountains are the same.

 

     There are no luminous stones here.

 

     It is here they find Link, a middle-aged man whose calloused hands and optimistic eyes betray his naivety to the ways of battle and the horrors of war. He leads them inside, and they find his father, a dying man who is withered and wrinkled and fading by the day, but Wild can sense power within him that makes his heart sing in the same way it did when he met the others.

 

     Time explains why they’re there to the other version of them. They learn his wife is pregnant, about to give birth, and that their family home, the house they stand in now, is the perfect place to set up a lineage.

 

     Link is kind and he lets them stay with him so they can refill on supplies and rest for the long journey ahead.

 

     While they are there, the dying man passes, and while it is sad, it is not entirely unexpected.

 

     A few minutes after, Link’s wife’s labor starts, and he excuses himself to bring his wife to the midwife. The others lie in wait for the baby to be born. They know what he has, because it is the power that they all carry with them.

 

     Well, most of them do.

 

     Wild cannot be bothered with the birth of the new incarnation of the Hero’s Spirit.

 

     When the old man passed, he started hearing whispers. 

 

* * *

 

 

     They say luminous stones hold the souls of the dead.

 

     Wild now knows that it that’s not entirely true.

 

     Luminous stones hold the remnants of a single wandering soul, a soul that’s been ripped out and shoved into so many bodies that it has started to fracture, to leave pieces behind every time it had to move.

 

     Long after the group of nine defeated the darkness and went their separate ways, Wild makes his final journey.

 

     Over the decades, he has cultivated a crop of Silent Princess, figures out how to nurture their growth in his yard in a way that Zelda never could in her fancy laboratories. 

 

     He frequently places the flowers down at the stone he thinks might be his father. He doesn’t remember how he died, his memories of his mother were hazy as a youth and they have only faded more now. 

 

     For his final quest, Wild picks his entire field of flowers. If Zelda were alive he knows she would have murdered him, but after she finally got to rest after the Calamity she passed quickly and peacefully, a hundred years of waiting finally paying off.

 

     He travels to find luminous stones.

 

     He is the last, he knows. The soul of the Hero’s Spirit has grown so fractured over the millennia that he holds the final shred.

 

     He hopes that when he is done, all the pieces of himself will be able to finally fade away.

 

     He hopes that when he is done, the luminous stones will glow no longer.

 

     So he leaves his comfortable home in Hateno, taking the Slate from its place on his mantelpiece, and leaves.

 

     He is too old to ride horses anymore, too old to run and climb as he once did in his youth, but he remembers recipes and ingredients and he's learned the ways of the world around him in a way that only time can teach. 

 

     His journey, lasts years. He takes the Princess, something he knows is fading away, like him, and plants it in front of every outcrop of luminous stone in all of Hyrule. 

 

     He plants it to honor the dead, the heroes of old and the people of normal, all parts of the same whole. He knows not if it survives (he hopes it does), but he will embrace the whispers that surround him on his quest.

 

     They are whispers of normal men, farmers and workers and builders, of sons and fathers, some too old to count their years and others barely old enough to open their eyes. Sometimes Wild will come to an outcrop and feel familiarity, a reminder of a quest so many years past of companions made from the same cloth as he, and he’ll leave more than just a Princess, often a reminder of their travels, a wooden ladle or a favorite meal that is ingrained into his very being.

 

     With every flower he plants, he can hear a joyful chorus. 

 

     " _Welcome home",_ the stones seem to sing. " _We have missed you."_

 

    When his task is complete, he will submit to the song, an eternity of souls will all sing as one and get louder and louder in a crescendo that can be heard through the heavens and beyond, the harmonies of both heroes and men meeting and building and growing.

 

     Wild, old and tired and weary, will smile

 

     And the song, finally complete, will go silent.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Please leave kudos + a comment or @ me on discord if you're in the server!
> 
> hnnnnnnnnnnnng the title is from a rad fuckin song linni sent me on discord. it's the OST to to something called drakengard which is the coolest word i've ever heard in my life. tysm linni!!!!
> 
> link here: https://youtu.be/KzEfkUNqpwk


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